CORAZON MONARCA

Vignettes of our immigrant story.
For far too long immigration has been documented with an “outsider perspective.” My wishes are never to undermine that perspective, as informative as it is. My attempts are to bring to light the other perspective; the psychological transformation folks endured, and never speak about. The psychological trauma they have suffered in their journey, the “inner perspective.” And it is their perspective, I believe must be explored. What is needed now, a truly intimate dialogue to decode any misunderstanding of our movement.

0:00

It is a multimedia experience of vignettes that explore the transformation of an undocumented immigrant.
This first part is a combination of my mother’s poem and video footage I recorded during my first trip to Mexico with advanced parole.

On the wings of destiny
The labyrinth you now cross
The toilsome step of your journey

Rapacious demons and creatures
Coveting your sadness your tears
and senses
Maleficent and eternal they drag you
Along wells infinite and dark
To the threshold where
That exiled and disowned
Angel fell
Divine clemency forgot who you were
Forgot you and yet
You cling, cling to whom you know
Someday ago loved you.

I have even come to feel
Your only friend, a faithful dog,
hope,
Abandoned you in the face of fearfulness
Of solitude
And the void

Oh, tragedy that crowds where you now dwell!
Reliving the “In the beginning” of a story past

To survive! To live! Or die!
Destiny of those first sons to a God as father
To a mistaken step of the journey
Exiled from a paradise
Where fruit and abundance
Were promised
So a heavenly creator never was.

To survive! To live! Or die!
Where was your choice
If you feel your life has been left
Without any longed for blessing?

You will plea to the Saints
invoke them
And supplications will rise from your songs
You will ask that your step takes you to meet your destiny.
Always with a step erect
Sorrow and pain, but you make your way.

In faraway lands,
Another sea,
Another time in which your own life
You’ll have to give up
In another dawn, in another rebirth

With heart raised to the heavens
This hell that afflicts you will become a yearning.

If in heavenly bliss forgotten I remained
My earthly faith in you I shall bestow.